"...Together, the United Jewish Appeal/Combined Jewish Appeal of Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Windsor, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Vancouver and Atlantic Canada raise over $100 million annually. The largest in the network, UJA Toronto's endowment and planned giving arm, has $500 million in assets and planned gifts. CJA Montreal has $300 million on hand...

Incredibly, there has been little public criticism of UJA's anti-Palestinianism. Despite delivering tens of millions of dollars a year to Israel and spending a comparable sum on Israel Advocacy in Canada, the organization presents itself as a political 'charity.' It's past time to bring some pressure on these morally odious institutions.

Taxpayers should tell political leaders they don't want to subsidize a wealthy country in the Middle East and the Canada Revenue Agency should be pushed to investigate whether Federation funding to CIJA and other politically engaged organizations contravene their rules about charities spending no more than 10 percent of their budgets on politics.

It's time for those who care about peace and international justice to treat the Federations the same way they treat Palestinians."

"T0day we recognise Yan-Al Ard or Land Day in Palestine. Land Day is celebrated every year on March 30th in Palestine in remembrance of the annexation of 2 thousand hectares of land by the Israeli government on that day in 1976."

"As I prepare to mark my people's liberation from oppression, Israel is killing unarmed Palestinians marching to have their suffering heard. Many have been killed, even more wounded, holding nothing but flags and their children's hands.

"The Israeli military brutally crushed a protest on the Gaza border led by tens of thousands of Palestinians, killing 15 and injuring 1,400. Journalist Max Blumenthal speaks of Israel's suffocating blockade of the Strip and biased meia reporting on the 'Great Return March..."

"Saying they were pretty hard to miss during her two-week visit to Israel, teenager Sarah Caplan told reporters Monday that she hadn't expected to see so many dead Palestinians on her Birthright trip. 'My friend Kate who came over last year said she noticed a couple, but this is way more dead Palestinians than I ever imagined,' said Caplan..."

Why can Canadian MPs unanimously support a condemnation of Russia for 'poisoning' - a crime for which there is no evidence, yet not rise unanimously to condemn the actually occurring criminality of the Israeli regime?

Why can Canadian MPs unanimously support a condemnation of Russia for 'poisoning' - a crime for which there is no evidence, yet not rise unanimously to condemn the actually occurring criminality of the Israeli regime?

"Joseph Weitz, the President of the Jewish National Fund, a group designated to reclaim the land of Israel, wrote in 1940, 'There is no room for both peoples in this country...and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - to tranfer them all. We must not leave a single village, a single tribe."

"...In order to feel that they are both Zionist and moral at the same time, they have to keep lying to themselves all the time. So they have perfected this whole discourse of lies in order to lie to themselves but also the international community in order to justify their existence here."

"The horror unfolding now in Gaza is the natural result of decades of complicity by the 'human rights' loving countries which oppose every form of Palestinian resistance to Israel's crimes, and continue to fund and profit from Israeli occupation and terror.

Israeli Army Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee posts image of Palestinian children seen through Israeli sniper's scope and warns Palestinians that no one can hid from them. Cold-blooded killers."

"Canada must act now to ensure that the UN and the world's governments and peoples force Israel to stop these crimes and allow for an independent investigation, end the illegal blockade of Gaza and honour the right of return of Palestinian refugees."

"The vast majority of the Canadian Jewish community professes to love Israel. We hear this both from Jews who are highly supportive of the Israeli government's policies, as well as from those who are critical of its decisions.

For Jews and Zionists the appropriate kind of love of Israel is unconditional love..."

"Palestinians continued protesting along Gaza's eastern border near Khan Younis on Friday, as part of the 'Great March of Return' movement. Drone footage shows the scale of the protest. At least 6 Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli forces and over 150 were wounded in the violence. The 6 week long rallies demand what Palestinian protesters say is their right to return to land now claimed by Israel."

"One assumes that if a state is an 'ally and friend' with another state, both offer condolences to each other in times of tragedy and share 'good advice' or at least 'restraint in using force' if an 'ally and friend' has fired on demonstrators, killing 17 of them and injuring 700.

But this is only if the 'ally and friend' is not named 'Israel' and if the victims of the military operation are not named 'Palestinians'. So Canada sheepishly didn't say anything to its 'friend and ally' and once again let down the Palestinian people.

This position - choose what you'd like to name it -- of 'cowardice' or 'self-censorship' or 'who really cares', not only defines the action or inaction of the Canadian government in general, it also applies to individual members of Parliament.

I really hope that Canadians will remember this troubling silence and think of the MPs that communities worked so hard to elect...Sometimes silence is more telling than words."

"In its excellent summation of daily newspapers' news and opinion the BBC recorded on 30 March that there was not one front-page headline about the Gaza story with the papers concentrating largely on nationalistic trivia..."

"This video shows two Israeli interrogators taunt and abuse Palestinian child prisoner Ahed Tamimi during an interrogation at a police station in the Shaar Binyamin settlement in the occupied West Bank on 26 December...

"Our main focus is on the question as to what we, as Canadians, can do for Israel. The projects that we promote in Israel connect us to the people of Israel. The delegation's itinerary included visits to various sites in Jerusalem, a visit to the Gaza border and to the Border Police base..."

"From March 30 to April 6, I participated in a study trip to areas of Palestine and Israel with 17 other MPs from all five parties organized by the Canada-Palestinian Parliamentary Friendship Group. Before our departure, Global Affairs Canada asked us all to keep public and social media comments to a minimum during our trip...

There is no question about the intentionality of the Israeli military. It has since taken credit for doing exactly what was ordered. Every bullet went where it was intended to go, say the commanders. This claim by the IDF makes it very clear that this was no accidental shooting. No on panicked. This was a systematic plan to murder unarmed civilians"

There are 16 other statements from the other MPs yet to come. Where are they? Ask them.

"Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns the Canadian government's silence on the Israeli massacres unfolding in Gaza. Condemning Israel's shooting of literally thousands of civilians by regular Israeli soldiers should be a 'no brainer'. As a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, Canada is sworn to uphold its tenets..."

"Israel is good at what it does. Damn good. No, not its slaughter, torture and endless detention and land theft; these are givens. A dark, very public, almost proud record of 'achievement' that stands essentially unparalleled when it comes to recent contempt for international norms and law. Like these before, what it really excels at is the grand lie....Yet, over the last ten days, that faux moral perch has begun to collapse as the winds of truth have blown away the mask of hate that is very much Israel."

"People in the Gaza Strip have marked the Palestinian Prisoners' Day near the so-called buffer zone in solidarity with thousands of Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails. The so-called buffer zone has been the scene of weekly rallies dubbed the Great Return March. Israel has arrested close to one million Palestinians since 1967."

"Interior Minister Aryeh Deri told Israeli army radio that to take these asylum seekers, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan, and expel them to Rwanda and Uganda, would merely mean returning them 'to their natural place'. Avraham Neguise, currently Israel's only black legislator, a Jew of Ethiopian origin, also spoke out in support of the deportation to Rwanda and Uganda, telling Israel's i24 TV, 'Well they came from Africa, and they're going back to Africa.'

Yitzhak Yosef, one of Israel's two national chief rabbis, also heaped scorn on the Africans in a sermon last month, in which he called the Black people 'monkeys' and the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word. His fellow chief rabbi, Yisrael Lov, had already used that Hebrew version of the N-word to describe Black people, on his very first day in office.

In February, one refugee confessed that a group of Israeli schoolchildren had approached him on a public bus and asked him, 'How much can we sell you for?' With the Ruanda-Uganda deal shelved in shame, and the UN deal for resettlement in the West now derailed by Netanyahu himself, the fate of the 40,000 African refugees in Israel is once again unclear..."

it is important to point out that there are Jewish associations in many countries that do not follow the Likudist line. Some are anti-Zionist, others are two-staters (along the lines of Uri Avnery) but they refuse to endorse how the state of Israel is treating Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and within Israel itself.

I have friends in such associations who have received threats from groups such as the JDL and Bétar.

From a UK Labour activist. Like the NDP, Labour has its own Friends of Israel, of whom it can be truly said with respect to their attacks upon Corbyn and the party, 'With friends like these, who needs enemies?

"Is it anti-Semitic to say Israeli snipers shouldn't shoot little Palestinian children with expanding soft-nosed bullets that cause them to require amputations? Just checking! I wouldn't want to morally outrage the Labour Friends of Apartheid!"

You aren't even listening to me, if you are a human and not a bot. I've supported BDS for a rather long time, but I'm sick of the shouty stuff as it seems to be more about the Russian leaders than the Palestinian masses,

You aren't capable of listening to people who actually agree with you about the oppression of the Palestinians. Just shouty macho stuff.

"The 11 year old Abdulrahman Noufel had been shot in the left leg after Israeli snipers targeted him in al Awdah refugee camp east of Rafah city on Wednesday, local media reported...but they were prevented from leaving the coastal enclave. Palestinians say protesters are being shot while posing no threat to soldiers."

From a UK Labour activist. Like the NDP, Labour has its own Friends of Israel, of whom it can be truly said with respect to their attacks upon Corbyn and the party, 'With friends like these, who needs enemies?

"Is it anti-Semitic to say Israeli snipers shouldn't shoot little Palestinian children with expanding soft-nosed bullets that cause them to require amputations? Just checking! I wouldn't want to morally outrage the Labour Friends of Apartheid!"

No, it is not antisemitic to say any of THOSE things...it IS antisemitic, however, to call for people to be suspicious of "Canada's Jewish Federations". Why didn't you say "Canada's Zionist Organizations", or "Allies of Netanyahu in Canada"? I would strongly suggest changing the thread title, as its current phrasing could bring Babble AND Rabble.ca into unjustified disrepute.

I have no difficulty changing the title Ken, the one you suggested works just fine for me. I am probably immune to the anti-semite bs though, having seen too often who uses it and to what ends. But the Palestinians are Semites too after all, and I would hate to bring Babble/Rabble into unjustified disrepute when the justified variety is in such obvious abundance.

"Israel dropped leaflets in the Gaza Strip on Friday, warning Palestinians not to approach the fence where the regime has deployed special forces, sharpshooters and armored vehicles. Organizers have however, moved their tents 50 meters closer towards the fence 'as a message of persistence from our people to the world that we are moving forward towards our rightful goals"

"An Israeli government minister has called for actress Natalie Portman to be stripped of her Israeli citizenship after she refused to attend the Genesis Award ceremony, citing 'extremely distressing' recent events. Portman was nominated to receive the prize, often called the 'Jewish Nobel', last November. 'I was very sorry to hear that Portman fell like a ripe fruit into the hands of BDS supporters, Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev said."

"Gaza protesters' gunshot injuries unusually severe, medics say. 'Half of the more than 500 patients we have admitted in our clinics have injuries where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone. - MSF."

"There is no room to doubt the evil nature of the expansionist apartheid state that Israel has no become. Nor the moral vacuity of its apologists in the western media."

"Today a 2nd Palestinian journalist died of wounds from an IDF sniper. Last week, CJFE fired its communications director because he urged the Canadian government to condemn such murders of journalists and civilians. Shame!"

"Sorry for the horrific image...say hello to the only democracy in the Middle East and the world's most moral army where you can cheer when you gun down Palestinian kids and yet get rewarded...#Fuck this hypocrite world."

"And I feel that the notion of Zionism, as that there is this kind of destiny of the Jewish people to have their own state, is just a wrong idea. And it's an idea that requires signing on to imperialism. It means signing on to ethnic cleansing. It means - despite everything that has been said about it, it means basically becoming a racist situation, where you're oppressing an indigenous population and depriving them of their right to existence, and then thinking that you can go ahead and have a decent life on that basis. And you can't in my view. And I join hands with those people who feel that the time has come to basically think of Israel in the same category as South Arica, as a state that just has gone wrong and needs replacement."

If a group of conscientious people came together, we could put in a charge in federal Court, disclosing their entire genocidal nature. Initial action $50, the Hearing about $300...I could probably front whatever....my problem is that I´m in and out of the country, so need backup to depose paperwork from their lawyers, in a timely manner!